Consultant Details

Kei-Mu Yi

Kei-Mu Yi holds the M. D. Anderson Chair in Economics at the University of Houston. He also serves as a consultant in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, where he held the positions of senior vice president and director of Research, as well as special policy advisor to the president, from August 2010 to January 2016.

Before joining the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Yi was vice president and head of Monetary and Macroeconomic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Yi joined the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in 2004, following seven years of service at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he was a research officer in the Bank’s International Research unit. Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, he was an assistant professor of economics at Rice University. Over the years, Yi has also taught at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Iowa.

Yi’s research currently focuses on issues relating to international trade and long-run growth; structural change in an open economy; the gains from international trade, and vertical specialization / fragmentation of production. He has published articles on the importance of vertical production linkages for international trade flows and is considered one of the founders of the analysis of “offshoring.” His publications appear in prestigious economics journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of Political Economy. He received a B.S. in economics from MIT and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.